


Fog of War

by imaginary_golux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Conflicting Loyalties, F/F, Fluff, Fluffy Ending, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Stormtrooper Mass Defection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 01:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7201070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a universe where everyone has their soulmate's name written on their skin, Poe's soulmark has always been smeared and illegible - and he's not alone. For decades, the Smudges have been trying to figure out why their soulmarks are so strange.</p><p>Poe figures it out after Jakku.</p><p>Beta by my Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fog of War

Poe Dameron is a perfectly normal child, if more outgoing and cheerful than many, until he is nine years old. Then his soulmark starts to emerge. It’s unusual for a soulmark to take so long to show - most soulmates are much closer in age - but not unheard of, certainly; Princess Leia Organa and her husband are the most famous example of a soulmate pair with more than a decade between them. But as the months go by and Poe’s mark becomes clearer, the strangeness becomes clearer too, because his mark is not a name in any script in the universe: it is a smudge, like smeared ink on his arm, illegible no matter how clear it grows.

 _That_ is so unusual no one else on Yavin 4 has ever heard of such a thing.

Kes and Shara spend countless hours on the holonet, looking for other people who might have similar marks, and eventually they find them: thousands of children in the last few years, scattered across the galaxy, whose marks have emerged as smears of ink instead of legible names. The Smudges, the children are called by the news services, and they take the name for themselves when they’re old enough to understand. They form holonet groups so they can talk to each other, because no one else really understands the pain of not _knowing_ what their illegible marks mean, and when they get old enough, a lot of them go into the Republic military, because the camaraderie of the military is at least something to replace the soulmate bond they’re not sure they’ll ever find.

In Poe’s squadron there are three Smudges: him and Jess Pava and Bastian. They’ve been friends since they met on the holonet when they were only children, and they have each other’s backs in the air and on the ground alike, when TIE fighters are shooting at them and when people are calling them foul names for the crime of not having soulmarks that can actually be read. There are other Smudges scattered through the Resistance forces, dozens of them, and in the Republic military; and when the Resistance needs money and materials, Poe talks to the Smudges he knows in the Quartermaster’s office, to the Smudges who look after the X-Wings and the supply depots, and they look the other way when he and his squadron come down to take what they need.

Smudges have each other’s backs. They’re the only ones who really understand.

*

Poe doesn’t feel his mark change, during those terrible, exhilarating moments in the TIE fighter when he names his rescuer, beautiful Finn who needed a pilot. He doesn’t know it’s changed until he gets back to D’Qar base, sunburnt and miserable, and has given his report to Leia and submitted to Kalonia’s attentions in the medbay and trudged back to his own quarters, showered the sand out of his hair and is in the process of rubbing aloe on his aching skin - and there on his arm, in the crook of his elbow, where he has always had nothing but a smudge of ink, in letters as clear and perfect as he’s ever seen, he sees his mark:

FINN.

He stares at it for a long time. He _knows_ it was a smudge when he went to Jakku, knows it was a smudge when he was captured, knows Kylo Ren taunted him about it while he was inside Poe’s head, and now - now -

 _Finn_. He named his rescuer, and the name is there on his arm.

“Holy...kriffing.... _hell_ ,” he says, and yanks on his pants and runs to find Testor and Bastian.

*

He’s sidetracked, unfortunately, by the call from Takodana, and has to go running back to pull on his flightsuit, and he doesn’t really have time to tell anyone anything after that, either, what with Finn being _alive_ , thank the Force, and BB-8 being safe, thank the Force _again_ , and the Starkiller weapon destroying all of Hosnian system, curse the First Order to the deepest hells, and then he’s leading his squadrons against the oscillator and his biggest regret, frankly, is that if he dies today he won’t be able to tell the other Smudges what he suspects is the truth.

Smudged marks are _Stormtroopers_. Nameless. But if they can be given names - if they can be given names, the Smudges will have their soulmates.

*

Poe lives. Finn lives, though he’s badly injured; Kalonia assures Poe that he’ll wake in good time. Poe tears himself from Finn’s side after that, goes to find Testor and Bastian and the General, Tabala and Pamich and the other Smudges on base, and herds them all into a conference room.

“What’s more important than the victory party, Dameron?” Jess grouches once they’re all in. Poe grins at her and hauls up his sleeve, and she leans forward with a gasp of sheer astonishment.

“Kriffing _hell_ , Dameron, when did that happen?” Bastian demands, reaching out as if to touch the word printed on Poe’s arm and then yanking his fingers away before he makes contact.

“When I named him,” Poe says quietly. “They’re Stormtroopers. Our smudges are _Stormtroopers_.”

Pamich swears the air blue. “That’s - what the hell are we supposed to do with that?” he asks the General desperately. “We don’t even know _which_ Stormtroopers!”

“Force,” Leia breathes. “I - Dameron, you bring me the damnedest problems. We’re at _war_ with them! I can’t pause the war to ask if some of them are your _soulmates_!”

Poe grimaces. “Ma’am, I know. But I couldn’t _not_ tell. This is the answer we’ve been looking for for _decades_.”

“Kriff,” Jess says softly. “And if they never get names - gods _damn_ it.”

Poe sits down, shoulders sagging. “I don’t have any other answers, guys. Except - once Finn wakes up I guess we’d better ask if he can come up with any way to get Stormtroopers to surrender or defect. Because now that we know - well, I don’t want to shoot any of them unless I have to. But I _will_ shoot if I have to.”

“Everyone’s someone’s soulmate,” the General says grimly. “But yes, Dameron, we’ll do our best to figure this out. Force damn the First Order, anyway.”

“There’s something we can all agree on,” Bastian replies.

*

Phasma comes to attention in front of General Hux and salutes. She is glad of her helmet, these days, when she is in Hux’s presence, because she often cannot keep the hatred from her expression. His failure to give the evacuation order killed _thousands_ of her best troopers, troops who could easily have been saved had Hux only had the balls to give an order before _he_ fled, and Phasma’s first loyalty is to her troops. Since her troops serve the First Order, this is nearly indistinguishable from loyalty to the First Order - but only nearly. Hux has found the fault line.

“I have found the source of FN-2187’s treason,” Hux says, tapping a console to bring up the errant trooper’s file. Phasma nods, watching Hux scroll through it, until Hux stops and taps at the screen.

 _Soulmark_ , the screen reads. _Poe Dameron_.

“Clearly, we should have been aware of this earlier,” Hux snarls. “Cross-reference the Stormtrooper soulmark listing with the known members of the Resistance and all other enemy militaries. Prepare a list of matches. Bring it to me when you are done.”

“Sir, yes sir,” says Phasma evenly, salutes again, and leaves.

*

The Stormtroopers are told to ignore their marks, of course. Nothing is made of them, beyond that single order, and while any of the troopers could tell you what their mark says, the same way they can list height and weight and known allergies, it’s merely another datum among many. That doesn’t mean that some of them - less disciplined than Phasma herself - haven’t wondered what the indelible name on their skin means, haven’t made up their own tales of belonging and family and even love.

Phasma knows _hers_ , but she’s never considered looking for the person whose name she bears. Why would she? She is a Stormtrooper of the First Order; that is what matters.

There are some troopers whose marks are nothing but smears, smudges of ink; they’re actually rather envied by the others. Phasma has occasionally wished that _she_ had nothing but a smudge. It’s less...distracting. Less like individuality.

She compiles the list as ordered, and is honestly rather surprised when she finds the true number of troopers whose marks show the names of known enemies of the First Order. Three hundred thousand troopers, a significant fraction even of the millions currently under arms. Phasma uploads the list to a datapad, shrugging a little, and brings it up to General Hux.

He waves it away when she offers it to him. “I don’t want it,” he snaps. “Have them all assembled somewhere - just those troopers. Load them into transports, tell them they’re being reassigned. Rig the transports to explode in hyperspace.”

“Sir?” Phasma asks, genuinely startled.

“They are threats to the First Order,” Hux grits out. “Treasonous cankers in our midst. I want them eliminated from our ranks.”

Phasma looks at him for a long, cold moment. Three hundred thousand of her troops, ordered killed in a moment for one man’s paranoia. At last she says, voice crisp and clear and emotionless as ever, “Sir, they will be eliminated as ordered.”

“Good,” says Hux, and dismisses her.

*

Phasma assembles the three hundred thousand Stormtroopers on her list at an out-of-the-way base, as ordered. She requisitions transports for all of them, as ordered. She requisitions TIE fighters for the pilots who are also among the listed troops, though that was not in her orders; if anyone asks, she will explains that it is against protocol for a large group of transports to travel without a TIE fighter escort. This is indisputably true.

She orders the Stormtroopers into their transports, gives them a few last instructions, and sends them on their way.

And when the last of the listed Stormtroopers is gone from the base - eliminated forever from the First Order - she steps into the small, fast single-person ship she has requisitioned for herself, sets the coordinates, and follows them into hyperspace.

*

Poe is in the middle of helping Finn through his stretching exercises when the all-hands alarm goes off. He helps Finn off the mat and back onto his bunk, kisses his soulmate hard, and runs for the hangar, yanking his flight suit on as he goes and not quite tripping into any walls.

The reason for the alarm is obvious as soon as he gets outside: a transport, the First Order emblem blazoned clearly on its side, hovering above the base. It is joined, moments later, by another - another - another. Poe stops, gaping, as three transports become ten, ten become dozens, until he is pretty sure there are at least a hundred transports waiting silent and ominous above the base, TIE fighters flanking them -

And none of them are firing, or making any move to land.

He scrambles into Black One, his fellow pilots racing for their own ships, shoves his helmet on and waits for the order to take off, to fight even though he knows there’s no way they can win against such terrifying numbers. But the order doesn’t come: instead, Leia’s voice crackles in his ear: “Hold fire, everyone. Apparently they want to talk.”

Poe boggles a little, BB-8 chirping confusion on their private line, and then one more ship flashes out of hyperspace, a sleek little one-person thing without any obvious weaponry, and comes in low and slow for a landing. “Hold your fire,” Leia commands again, and Poe waits, every nerve on edge, while the little ship touches down and a tall figure in gleaming silver armor steps out, takes off its helmet and waits, unarmed and impassive, while Leia emerges from the base with half a dozen armed troops behind her and comes forward.

They speak, Leia and the silver-armored figure who can only be the terrifying Captain Phasma Finn has told Poe about, though he can’t hear anything they say, of course. And then Leia’s voice over the comm line says, “Stand down, everyone. Dameron, with me.”

Poe clambers out of Black One, confused as he’s ever been, and goes trotting across the tarmac to the General and her unlikely guest. Leia smiles up at him.

“So, Dameron,” she says. “Remember that problem you brought me the other day?”

“Problem?” Poe says, baffled, and then realizes that she means the smudges. “What about it, ma’am?”

“General Hux ordered me to eliminate all the Stormtroopers who might be affected as FN-2187 was affected from the ranks of the First Order,” Phasma says, and Poe blinks at her, still deeply confused. “I have done so,” Phasma continues, gesturing to the ranks upon ranks of transports above her, the TIE fighters guarding their flanks. “We no longer serve the First Order.”

It takes Poe another moment, because the idea is so blazingly, gloriously insane he can hardly get his mind around it. “All our smudges...are up there,” he says at last. “You brought our soulmates here.”

“Yes,” Phasma confirms, and Poe lets out a whoop that rings across the tarmac, swoops the nearest person up in his arms - it’s Tabala, who looks as ecstatic as Poe feels - and swings her around in glee.

“Dameron,” says Leia, sounding like she’s trying hard not to laugh, “put Tabala down and go get me Finn. And swing by the library to grab a book on names, too.”

“Yes, _ma’am_!” Poe carols, and goes trotting off to the sound of Leia’s chuckles.

*

The base is far too small for an extra three hundred thousand people (three hundred _thousand_ , Force help them, every Smudge out there must have their match in those transports), but there’s an uninhabited planet not too far away where the ex-Stormtroopers can build temporary shelters, and Poe finds himself there with every other Smudge on base - and Finn, of course, because Finn’s not going to be left behind - while thousands of confused ex-Stormtroopers disembark from their transports and are given their orders by Phasma. They obey quickly enough, setting up shelters and laying out a camp with the easy precision of people who have done so many times before, and after an hour or so Phasma comes over to where Poe and his people are waiting, with a good couple dozen people behind her, three TIE pilots and the rest uncomfortable-looking Stormtroopers with their helmets off.

“QR-1800,” Phasma orders, “you will choose a name for yourself, and then the rest of you in order of rank.”

“Yes, Captain,” one of the TIE pilots says, and takes the holobook when Poe holds it out. Poe and Finn move to the side with Phasma.

“So,” says Poe carefully, keeping one eye on the little gaggle of ex-First Order personnel as they cluster around the one with the holobook, “why did you come _with_ your troops, Captain Phasma?”

Phasma says calmly, “General Hux ordered that every Stormtrooper bearing a mark known to belong to one of our enemies be eliminated.”

“Wait,” Finn says, “wait, you mean _you_ have someone’s mark? One of ours?”

“My soulmark reads ‘Rey Skywalker,’” Phasma says. “She is undoubtedly an enemy of the First Order.”

“Holy kriffing _hell_ ,” Finn says, and Poe sways a little, staring at Phasma in astonishment.

QR-1800 hands the holobook to the next ex-Stormtrooper in line and says, loudly enough that Poe can hear it clearly, “I will be named Quorra. My soulmark says Jessika Pava.”

Jess tears her sleeve trying to get it up far enough that she can see her mark, and Poe hears her sob, just once, as it resolves from a smudge into a word, a name. “Quorra,” she says, and stumbles forward to take the TIE pilot’s hands in hers. “Quorra. Dear gods, I - I’m so glad to meet you.”

“Hello, Jessika Pava,” Quorra says.

Poe has to look away and dry his eyes on his sleeve, and Finn leans against him, arm around his waist. “Captain Phasma,” Poe says once he can trust his voice again, “I owe you - we all owe you more than we can ever pay for this day’s work.”

“I am loyal to my troops,” Phasma tells him evenly. “I have eliminated them from the First Order, and I have brought them to safety. You owe me nothing.”

“Yeah, pretty sure every Smudge in the galaxy owes you a hell of a lot,” Poe says. “But I suppose that’s neither here nor there at the moment.” He shrugs. “The important question is, are you going to help us take out the First Order’s higher-ups with as little damage to the Stormtroopers as possible?”

Phasma startles, and stares at him blankly for a moment, shock clear on her face - the first emotion Poe has seen thus far to break her perfect composure. And then, very slowly, she nods, and says, “Yes, Poe Dameron. I will.”

Finn smiles as Poe shakes Phasma’s hand. “Now we just need to get Rey back from - where she is -” he grins apologetically at Phasma - “and everything will be perfect.”

“Yeah,” Poe agrees. “Huh. Wonder if she knows what her last name is?”

“...Good question,” Finn says, and Phasma gives them both a deeply skeptical look, and Poe looks from her to the little cluster of his friends and their newly-found soulmates and can’t help laughing for sheer, unbounded joy.

*

(“Skywalker, huh,” Rey says, looking at the words scrawled black against Phasma’s pale skin. “I think I’m gonna have to have words with my father.” She looks up into Phasma’s face, and smiles. “But first - want to have dinner with me, soulmate?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Phasma replies, smiling back down at her, and they both ignore Finn’s squeak of happiness and the way Poe kisses him in glee.)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr at imaginarygolux.tumblr.com! Come and say hi!


End file.
